Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

Too Big to Fail

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.

The Greatest Trade Ever: How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History

In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected--that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it....

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made Michael Lewis' work possible.

The Intelligent Investor Rev Ed.

The greatest investment advisor of the 20th century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" - which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies - has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market Bible ever since its original publication in 1949.

The Wolf of Wall Street (Movie Tie-in Edition)

By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited at home and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king, here, in Jordan Belfort's own words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called the Wolf of Wall Street.

The Money Culture

The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.

All the Devils Are Here

As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Next: The Future Just Happened

We are in the midst of one of the greatest status revolutions ever, and it's a brave new world indeed. Who better to guide us through it than Michael Lewis, whose subversive, trenchant humor is the perfect match to his subject matter. Here is an audiobook as fresh as tomorrow's headlines, and as entertaining as its best selling predecessors.

Hedge Fund Market Wizards

This audiobook provides fascinating insights into the hedge fund traders who consistently outperform the markets, in their own words. From best-selling author, investment expert, and Wall Street theoretician Jack Schwager comes a behind-the-scenes look at the world of hedge funds, from 15 traders who've consistently beaten the markets. Exploring what makes a great trader a great trader, Hedge Fund Market Wizards breaks new ground, giving readers rare insight into the trading philosophy and successful methods employed by some of the most profitable individuals in the hedge fund business.

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System

From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, On the Brink is Paulson's fast-paced retelling of the key decisions that had to be made with lightning speed. Paulson puts the listener in the room for all the intense moments as he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with of all the notable players.

Publisher's Summary

Featuring an exclusive audio interview with Michael Lewis

When the crash of the U.S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real-estate derivative markets, where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.

The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real-estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages?

Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his number-one best-selling Liar’s Poker. "Who got it right?" he asks. Who saw the ever-rising real-estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles?

Out of this handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier best sellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.

What the Critics Say

“No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis....[he] does a nimble job of using his subjects’ stories to explicate the greed, idiocies and hypocrisies of a system notably lacking in grown-up supervision....Writing in faintly Tom Wolfe-ian prose, Mr. Lewis does a colorful job of introducing the lay reader to the Darwinian world of the bond market.” (Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times)

“Superb: Michael Lewis doing what he does best, illuminating the idiocy, madness and greed of modern finance. . . . Lewis achieves what I previously imagined impossible: He makes subprime sexy all over again.” (Andrew Leonard - Salon.com)

Lewis should be heralded for the way he takes a very complex idea (sub-prime mortgage default swap collateral debt obligations) and breaks it down into easy-to-understand language. If you were at all confused about how the financial system tanked in 2008, you'll be glad you read this book and also pretty disgusted at the kind of magical thinking that went on on Wall Street. But what makes this book readable is his characterization of three oracular entities (Mike Burry, Steve Eisman, and the Cornwall Capital Group) that foresaw the collapse before anyone else ever did. The characters come across as misanthropic, boisterous, and naive respectively and allow the reader to see the tragedy through three very different perspectives. A read you won't want to put down (...or turn off).

I have read a bunch of books about the 2007 financial crash. By focusing on the people that made a lot of money from the crash, this book explains quite clearly the underlying causes of the crash. Unfortunately this book requires a bit of understanding of how markets and financial products work. If you have these basic understandings, this is the best of the bunch of books examining the 2007 crisis. Not only were the characters quite fun to read about, but the story helped explain the underlying causes of the crisis in an interesting and compelling way. I generally recommend this as a great place to start if you want to understand the mechanics of what happened in the financial crisis of 2007.

I could not believe how captivated I was by this book from start to finish. I have no interest in Wall Street, stocks, bonds etc, but this book brought that world to life for me. If you have ever wondered what caused the meltdown in our economy this book will answer that question and then some. It was scary, entertaining and most of all a cautionary education about the true nature of our economy and it's fragility. Download it and listen... you will never look at your investments the same way again.

First off, this book tells its story well - its a story of the traders who saw the subprime crisis coming, and, by examining how they managed to bet against the market, the book also illuminates exactly how the subprime debacle occurred. Lewis does a wonderful job showing how so many very smart people made so many stupid assumptions, based on a mix of bad data, bad organizations ("its not my job to worry"), and the most infuriating forms of cheating, lying, and bad-dealing.

My problem with the book, and it is a minor one, is that by staying so narrowly focused on this topic, it tends to follow the progression of a few traders and managers throughout the book, often in great detail. This can make it hard to follow the larger story of the context and economic dealings that surround "The Big Short", especially in audiobook format. Also, since not all of the characters are equally interesting, attention can also wander during parts. Additionally, I suspect that the truly uninitiated will be somewhat confused by terminology - the book assumes you know what "hedging" is and how it works from near the beginning, for example.

While the reader is good, but not great, Lewis is still a great writer, and the story is compact, fascinating, and important. I recommend it, but perhaps only to those who know a little about the subprime crisis to begin with.

This is fun and funny, interesting and educational. It did everything I was hoping for and more. It delved into both the technical details and personalities of the sub-prime meltdown. It reads like a history but is kept interesting by interweaving finance, personalities, politics and humanity. Anyone who is interested in the meltdown or just interested in the stories of the very few people that saw it coming, this is a must read.

Great storytelling and narration. However, I cannot say I understood as much here as I did reading Michio Kaku's book on parallel universes and I knew nothing of either subject when I began each book. Noting the popularity of The Big Short, I cannot help but feel a lot of people must understand financial instruments much better than I and I need to study up on the subject. The book was long on the process that brought the world to its financial knees and quite a bit shorter on the story of the people involved.

How could the world's most advanced and enlightened economy allow an irresponsible, greedy and self-deluded congregation of Wall Street bankers to accumulate such gargantuan financial losses that the whole country was imperiled? For, as Churchill might have put it, never in the realm of economic activity have so many suffered so much at the hands of so irresponsible a group of bankers.

Michael Lewis attempts to answer this question through the stories of the relatively few professional investors who took the time to dig into the subprime mortgage market and perform careful credit analysis of the loan quality underpinning the whole market. What they found was not surprising. It was a credit disaster waiting to happen. What is revealing is the reception they received from mainline Wall Street firms, their own investors, and the credit rating agencies. In nearly all cases their views were discounted ("it could never happen in the US housing market;" "subprime loan losses will not all happen at the same time") and they were dismissed as misfits. The Wall Street money machine, fueled by huge financial rewards, animal spirits and a "we know better" culture, simply moved on heedlessly to even greater risks and excess. Well worth the read, but I would start with David Faber's book ("Then the Roof Caved In") if you are new to the mortgage-backed security world of Wall Street.

I was actually bummed out that the book ended. This book raised the bar for me as to what I would be willing to swallow in my audiobook collection. Very well narrated, and extremely well written for it's category. The author doesn't over dramatize it, but adds enough of the characters personality to keep you interested during the dryer "explanation of what a CDS and CDO is for the 100th time because the average reader by now probably still doesn't understand what we are listening to"....

In 2007-8, defaults on low-cost loans to risky (sub-prime) borrowers nearly took the entire financial edifice down. What happened?

Michael Lewis' book goes a long way to explaining how a few bad mortgages caused the near-implosion of the entire American financial system in 2007-8. He goes into the nature of the individuals and players who were making these investments (bets), how they made the decisions they made and what the implications were.

In addition to studying characters and events, Lewis provides a good explanation of the underlying nature of the investments...mortgage-backed bonds, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) and Credit Default Swaps (CDS's) that led to the investment crisis, and how they came to become such a large part of various investment strategies. If you wanted to know how these items worked and how they evolved into such a major part of the economy, this is a good place. A deep understanding of Wall Street is not needed.

The book is well-written. The characters are engaging and there is enough dark humor to keep it from getting boring. It's perhaps more of a story and a little less academic than one might expect. There are a few omissions...for example, I would have like to have learned more about the rating companies' surprising willingness to give high ratings to questionable securities (Lewis talked about it, but I was left wondering about more of the details of that aspect of the story).

Jesse Boggs's reading is great. He really seems connected with the author's content.

In conclusion, "The Big Short" is somewhat like Greek tragedy...the story is compelling, but the gods are toying with everyone and the listener knows the unhappy ending before the book even starts.

After reading this book, I finally understood what caused the market crash in 2008. It was so inevitable and the few who saw the coming disaster profited greatly. Michael Lewis made a very, very complex problem understandable. I finally understand what a credit default swap is. Warning! This book is not for the financially faint of heart. Well worth the effort.